Some employees at Cincinnati Public Schools are raking in big money. CPS has 45 people who make more than $100,000 per year. Of the 45, 42 are administrators and three are teachers. 100 employees make $90,000 or more.

WLWT News 5's Amy Wagner examined documents from 2012 and found 53 people in CPS are part of the $100K club. That's up more than 20 percent from 2011. Wagner's investigation found 45 people making $100,000 or more in 2011. And in the latest figures, every person on the list was an administrator. Three teachers who made a six-figure salary in 2011 are not on the list anymore.

Wagner talked to one parent at Mount Airy Elementary who didn't want to be identified. She told us, "I'm just not too pleased with the academics here."

Mount Airy is on academic watch by the state of Ohio. The mother said she believes, "The money is going in the wrong place. If the money is going there, things need to be managed better."

CPS superintendent Mary Ronan sat down with Wagner in January to respond to the 2011 numbers. At the time, Ronan told us, "We have veteran teachers who have been with the district for 20, 24 or 40 years." She said their experience and tenure led to the higher paychecks.

However when we questioned the increase in administrators in 2012, Ronan declined an on-camera interview. Instead she responded only to questions in writing. She said much the same thing about the latest list. Ronan told us it's likely those bumped above that $100,000 threshold "... have received favorable performance reviews and/or contractual salary enhancements required by their collective bargaining group."

The school district also sent Wagner documents that it says shows that administrators are not overpaid. District leaders maintain CPS has proportionally fewer administrators than other districts, and that they save money by paying more money to fewer administrators.

School board member Eve Bolton was not as reticent about doing an interview. She thanked WLWT for our ongoing investigation into the salaries at CPS, saying, "I'm glad you're here challenging what we're doing."

Bolton is a former board president. She said a state audit in 2008 showed CPS administrators were overpaid when compared with comparable districts across the state. Bolton said since then the district has worked to correct that. In explaining the $100K club, Bolton told us, "The administration, they also have performance evaluations that begin to translate into more monies as well as an equation based on how many students they have, what is the poverty line within their school."

The head of the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers also defended those six-figure salaries. Julie Sellers told us, "Administrators make or break a school. They make or break the district, you do have to have salaries that are comparable so you can recruit the very best."

But she also admitted she hears from teachers who question some of the salaries at the central office. "Teachers do complain, they say, 'I'm on the front lines. I'm making half of what they're making, how could my job be any less hard or less important than what they're doing?'"

In the end, the numbers boil down to a difficult math equation for school board members. They must balance a budget facing a deficit that could top $50 million while dealing with a payroll where the $100K club grew, and the state ranking dropped from "effective" to "continuous improvement."

Bolton told us those results simply aren't going to cut it. "The reality is continuous improvement is not good enough and anything less than that is completely unacceptable."